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Apple Licenses Nokia Patents, Ending Lawsuits

archipellago said:
The GSM patent pool, works in that you pay less for other licenses if you contribute more IP to the pool.

As Apple were unwilling to contribute any IP to the pool they were told to pay top whack for the licenses.
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Exactly. Apple wanted to pay the same rate as other pool contributors, but without contributing anything. That's not fair in anyone's book.

Nokia was even willing to let an American jury decide a fair license fee and any damages, but Apple apparently didn't want to take a chance on their decision.

In any case, the Nokia deal is done. So what next?

Well, some wonder if Apple has also been avoiding Ericsson, who has a large share of GSM patents as well, and who is known to sue phone makers for royalties.
 
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aristotle said:
Uh, no. They invented some GSM technology. I think everyone would agree that the iPod Touch is basically an iPhone without a cellular chip in it right? Everyone would also agree that the Verizon iPhone is also an iPhone but without GSM technology right?

Ok, now if I turn it on its side then the iPhone is basically an iPod touch with a cellular chip in it. What other parts of the iPhone besides the cellular chip in the GSM iPhones and the cellular software stack that communicates with it are legitimately covered by Nokia patents? In my estimation, 95% of the GSM iPhone was not based on inventions originated at Nokia.

@archipellago: But what you are missing is that the patent pool was originally meant only for patents related to GSM cellular networking but Nokia wanted Apple to contribute multi-touch patents to the pool which are not cellphone specific are are used in Apple's non-phone products.
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Mmm, not only GSM but Wifi, SMS and other radio patents.
 
Regardless of their current state as consumers we do have a lot to be grateful to Nokia for. :)
 
lilo777 said:
OK, so Apple therefore admitted that they were wrong. Now lets hear from LTDs of this forum how they are going to spin this. They have been claiming all along that Apple was the "innovator" here and Nokia was in the wrong.
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Where did apple admit they were wrong?

They apparently agreed to pay a license fee and cross-license some patents. It's not clear whether this is more or less than what Nokia had been asking for, but it's presumably less otherwise Apple would have taken their chances in court. I also don't think Apple ever really said they weren't willing to pay - their argument appeared to be that they wanted the same license everyone else had. For all we know that's what they got.
 
mdriftmeyer said:
This isn't a victory for NOKIA.

This is a win by Apple. Nokia had all but 2 Patents thrown out and the last two only up for review.

Apple won this one.
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If it makes you sleep better at night...

*LTD* said:
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_3 like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8J2 Safari/6533.18.5)
Who cares at this point.

How about Nokia patenting a friggin clue?

This company is nearly defunct. They're doomed unles WP7 saves them and at this point WP7 barely has any traction, no one really cares about it and carriers are actually pushing customers *away* from the platform. WP7 share has actually been shrinking. Both Nokia and WP7 need to somehow survive into 2012, and *then* consumers need to somehow find it in themselves to actually give a damn.

There's nothing to boast about here regarding Nokia, unless we're applauding stupidity and laziness.
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Blah blah ... if the outcome was definitively in Apple's favor you would be singing a completely different tune...let the spin begin

samcraig said:
You're posts are sometimes frustrating - but often times just funny in their insanity. Especially when they are 100 percent biased and disregard facts.
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Every post is a new LTD marketing opportunity.

Thunderhawks said:
Why the press or anti Apple or anti Nokia people need to determine a winner or loser is beyond me.
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Likely too much personal attachment to a corporation.
 
Oletros said:
Mmm, not only GSM but Wifi, SMS and other radio patents.
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SMS, I can see but Wifi is not specific to phones of any type. I surprised that they were granted any WiFi related patents since those should have been part of the Wifi group rather than a cell phone related group.

If Nokia was not involved in the development for the Wifi standard then their "patents" should be invalidated especially if they are trying to extort fees for non-phone devices.
 
aristotle said:
SMS, I can see but Wifi is not specific to phones of any type. I surprised that they were granted any WiFi related patents since those should have been part of the Wifi group rather than a cell phone related group.

If Nokia was not involved in the development for the Wifi standard then their "patents" should be invalidated especially if they are trying to extort fees for non-phone devices.
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Various GSM-related patent holders have, in the past, asserted their patents also apply to various aspects of 802.11. Remember, these patents go to fundamental techniques of putting information out on the waves, and are not necessarily limited to specific frequencies or (in many cases) things that are specific to GSM.
 
Oletros said:
Why would have taken their chances in court? Perhaps they have settled because they knew they will lose.

We don't know the settlement conditions
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A "loss" in court would have resulted in apple paying what Nokia asked for.

So even if apple thought they'd lose, if there was even a small chance of winning they'd have kept going instead of just paying that amount now in settlement.
 
cmaier said:
A "loss" in court would have resulted in apple paying what Nokia asked for.

So even if apple thought they'd lose, if there was even a small chance of winning they'd have kept going instead of just paying that amount now in settlement.
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No, a loss in court may result in additional fees for damages, plus all the lawer fees.
 
Oletros said:
No, a loss in court may result in additional fees for damages, plus all the lawer fees.
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Huh? I'm with you on lawyer fees (in other words, yes, Apple would have to pay a few million to its lawyers to take the case to conclusion, but that's piddly compared to the cost of settlement - if the cost of settlement is, for example, $1B in the first 5 years, and there is a 1% chance that Apple could invalidate the patents, that should be treated as $100M, which is far far more than attorney fees.

As for "additional fees for damages," that's just wrong. The maximum damages that would be awarded in the case would be the amount of money (both for past infringements and going forward) that Nokia asks for. Not an amount on top of that.

Further, these damages would almost certainly be calculated as a "reasonable royalty."
 
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